The Bet
by A Midnights Dream
Summary: Had Dicen Elkyone really sunk so low as to make a wager with a lowly draconian? Just what is this bet? What is at risk? And under what circumstances would the misguided scientist allow his most troublesome experiment to kiss him, and show him other sweet affections?


**- The Bet –**

**A Grayscale Fanfiction**

By A Midnight's Dream

Link to Grayscale: fourfears dot com

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Dicen Elkyone knew what he wanted. He'd been trying to tell himself for weeks-no, _months_- that it wasn't true. But alas here he was, walking down the white sterile hallways of the Elkyone labs (when just about everyone else had gone home) bound for the cage area. Not for the first time, the scientist nervously adjusted his thick glasses on the bridge of his nose and questioned just what the hell he was doing.

This was not right. He shouldn't be doing what he was planning on doing. If he were caught by someone, god only knew what would happen. And yet…his pace still quickened when he rounded the corner from the hallway and saw the thick, metal door of the cage room come into view. Dice was about to enter the cage room when he stopped. His hand hovered over the cold door knob indecisively. This was it…if he walked through that door, there would be no going back. He needed to make up his mind here and now. He could turn back, go home and read that new book on astrophysiology he bought and never know what would've happened. Or…he could stop playing it safe, walk through this door and get some answers.

The door to the cage room squeaked open and a rectangle of light fell upon the floor of the pitch black room. In the middle of the white rectangle stood Dicen's slender but proud silhouette. He knew even before he saw the glowing pair of draconian eyes floating in the darkness that _he_ was awake in here. So he wasn't surprised to see number 62 up and facing him when he flicked on the lights, closed the door and locked it behind him. The experiment was silent, and watched the man approach with apprehensive green eyes. Dice casually approached the cage with his hands stuffed in his lab coat pockets and stopped a few feet away to stare at Nine with a thoughtful expression.

The drac's mouth quirked up into a crooked smile.

The scientist kept his slender features trained in a mask of indifference. But underneath the thin layer of his pale skin a maelstrom of insecurity and doubt was brewing. But his phoenix pride would be _damned_ if he let the drac see that he affected him in anyway. This experiment, who called himself Nine, had been the source of his sleepless nights and self doubt for the past five months.

The scientist had spent years digging trenches, erecting walls and barricades topped with barbed wire around his heart. He found that if you never let anyone in then you couldn't get hurt. It was a simple concept. Not only that, but being cold and impersonal made this line of work much more tolerable…but even with all that careful distancing things still got to you in this place. That's what the tranqs were for. Dice was capable of communicating with coworkers in a formal setting when the topic was something work related. But the young genius was painfully socially awkward. So much so that he poured himself into his work: He carefully distanced himself from his cohorts, male and female alike. He became engrossed with becoming successful, so that it wouldn't matter if he didn't have any friends. His father was proof of that. In the process of all this Dice lost sight of what it meant to be compassionate and sensitive towards others. He was only concerned with results and solutions, nothing else. That is…until the day they brought Nine in here.

He knew from the moment he sunk down to his eye level and negotiated with him about his confiscated bag that he was out of his league with this one. Day by day, little by little, the draconian wormed his way into Dice's inky-black heart. He seemed to find sympathy for even the craziest things that he did, and god damn it—his empathy, compassion, and understanding hammered against his barricades like relentless tidal waves, slowly eroding them little by little. And tonight, Dicen Elkyone had finally snapped. He was tired of denying how pleasant it was to be near him and to have his occasional- almost accidental- brush up against him. His heart pounded in nervousness lately when he had to administer his tranqs and Siinca. The drac's warmth seeped even through his impersonal, sterile gloves and warmed Dice to the very core. When he was gone for the rest of the day, not touching him, his warmth was all he could think about. He missed it and craved it.

Well, it could just be the dose of tranquilizers he'd shot up with tonight, but Dice found that he was simply too impatient to wait to see the draconian tomorrow. And to be honest he had some _things_ he wanted to study that he didn't want anyone else to know about. It was his own _private_ research, if you will.

"I suppose you know why I'm here." Dice said, pretending to sound indifferent. Pretending to sound like he hadn't been fighting himself to stay away from here all day, before he finally lost it and gave in.

Number 62 continued to smirk and leaned his cheek into his fist. "I'm guessing you decided to take me up on my offer?"

Suddenly the phoenix could not seem more flustered. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, averted his gaze, all in an effort to hide the light flush clinging to his high cheek bones. But it didn't matter if he tried to hide it. This one could _feel _it. With _his_ element he could likely feel the flush of warmth spreading across his cheeks, even if he couldn't see it. After all, Dice hadn't given him his E.E.D today…perhaps on purpose.

"_Yes_, okay? Are you happy now?" He asked, irritated. He didn't like losing at his own game, but it was even worse when the victor rubbed it in his face.

"Yes."

Dice looked down into open green orbs and was taken aback by the openness he found lying within them. The scientist bit his lower lip. This is how it had all happened: His honesty, those eyes of his, how he knew just what to say to make him think with his _heart_ for once instead of his head. It was what made him agree to this whole stupid offer in the first place. He wanted so desperately to trust him back and maybe become his friend…but…you know what they always say: Never trust a drac. But Dice was finding that it was exceedingly difficult _not_ to trust this one.

The draconian stood up to the best of his ability in his cage and came to the bars. He looked fairly absurd hunched over like that, but Dice hardly noticed. The experiment looked at him with those seemingly large, innocent orbs. Not for the first time the scientist felt a dull ache inside of him. Just once, he wished he could see what color those pairs of eyes were. It bothered him that he didn't know, that he could never _truly_ know what color they were. He had no idea why he felt that way though. "Just let me out, and I'll show you. Not much to lose, is there?"

Au contraire, there was _quite_ a bit to lose. The phoenix sighed. There was a moment of silence, and then, "Alright, fine." The sound of jingling keys filled the silence between them as Dice fished around in his pockets for the keys to Nine's cage. Honestly, what was the point of pretending you weren't going to let him out when you even went ahead and brought the keys with you ahead of time? It was quite stupid, really. His game was slipping. The key put up no resistance as Dice turned it in the lock.

Nine stepped out of the cage and yawned as he stretched his muscley arms over his head and rolled his shoulders around, earning a few pops. Dice felt his stomach drop. It was always a little intimidating the way he towered over you like that. After a short stretching session, Nine locked eyes with his caretaker and smirked, much to the latter's dismay.

"W-wait." Dice stammered, retreating backwards as the towering draconian approached him from the front. "I-I've changed my mind."

"No going back now, _doc_." Nine said slowly closing the space between them. "Besides. You can lie to me all you want, but I know what you _really_ want…in here."

Dice quivered as the drac raised his massive palm and placed it over the spot in his chest where his heart would be. His warmth-his wretched, cursed warmth-seeped through his shirt and made him shiver. He was so cold inside and out. Roughly and without thinking Dice shoved his hand away and made to step around the drac.

"You don't know what I want. Don't pretend to-"

"You _want_ me…"

Dice felt his words abruptly die in his throat and his face flushed a royal red. He turned around slowly, eyes wide behind the thick frames of his glasses, and looked to the drac's face expecting to find condescension. But he didn't. Nine's face was open to argument, allowing Dice to deny his claim at any point. But at the moment the Phoenix's voice seemed to be out of order. The draconian continued.

"I mean, obviously. Why else would you be here right now?" Nine continued on his tirade unaffected by Dice's growing horror. "You've been sleeping like shit lately. Your mom and sister are worried about you. But you couldn't tell them why you weren't able to sleep. That the reason you couldn't sleep was because-"

"Alright, enough!" The raven-haired scientist yelled, cutting Nine off. For heaven's sake he was getting so worked up he felt his skin prickle around his temples as jet-black feathers poked out of his pale skin. "You don't…You don't have to say it…" Dicen dropped his gaze and refused to look anywhere near the experiment. He knew very well where he was going with this. It was no secret the drac was perceptive, but…this was uncanny.

Dice could hear the experiment's feet softly padding over to him. His fists tensed. _Tell him to back off, Dice._ His inner voice, responsible for the construction of the barricades, advised. His mind agreed, but his body just couldn't seem to get going. The experiment padded closer and then stopped with about two feet of space between them. He could practically _feel_ the waves of warmth radiating off of him like rays of sun, shining on him and warming him to his bones. His proximity made his stomach churn with nervousness but most of all…it made him hungry. Hungry for his touch, his smell, his everything. Forget sexually deprived, Dicen Elkyone was so _physically_ deprived that his body craved any sort of contact. Any form of tenderness at all. And then here Nine was, the object of his sleepless nights and aching loins, standing less than a yard from him. He felt desire uncoil and roost inside his body. His heart rate accelerated in an almost exhilarating way.

"Well, fuck." Nine's deep voice cut through the silence like a sterilized scalpel. The scientist looked up and saw the experiment sigh and run his fingers through his choppy reddish hair. "…You're even worse than I thought."

Dice gaped, and then quickly closed his mouth. "W-What are you talking about?"

"Look at you." He said as if that would answer everything. "You're so hungry for contact it's like you're starving." Nine's brow furrowed and he pursed his lips. "Someone should fix that for you…" He approached Dice with a hooded green gaze even as his prey continued to back closer to the wall.

The phoenix's brow furrowed and his handsome expression turned angry. "You keep away from me, you over grown lizard!" He shouted, uncaring of who would hear now. "I'm warning you, all it will take is a press of a button and the guards-" The shorter man's sentence was cut off abruptly as his back came into contact with a wall. He gasped, and when he returned his vision to the front he was in the shadow of the towering draconian. Dice looked helplessly up into Nine's eyes, and the lizard felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

The reptile placed both of his massive hands on the wall on either side of Dice's shoulders. The same way he did that one time when Dice had let him out to chat. Only this time there were no handcuffs. Could that have meant that he was beginning to trust him? Or was he simply so hungry that he wanted Nine to use his hands somewhere…

"Hmmnn…" The thought tickled the dragon's lower abdomen.

"What're you _hmmmm_-ing about?" The scientist snapped, cranky as ever. But for once Nine didn't bother to respond to him. He felt the pale man beneath him stiffen as he slowly began to bring his face down towards his. At first, the phoenix looked as if he couldn't have wanted to get far enough away: he tried backing up even though there was nowhere left to retreat. But as Nine started getting closer, the shorter male blushed, closed his eyes and tilted his lips up expectantly. Nine was close enough to feel the scientist's sour breath fanning his cheeks and likewise Dice could feel the other's heat against his skin. Nine hovered his lips over Dice's and opened up his sixth sense.

Dice's accelerated blood pressure hit him like a plow. He could feel raw hunger and want coursing through Dice's veins. It made Nine take in an audible breath and his nails elongate from the excitement. His breathing started to pick up and he struggled to break the connection; if he hung on too long he would surely lose it. It didn't happen often, but when he could roughly feel an emotion he was very susceptible to it. His element was body, exclusively dealing with blood. But sometimes there were other things floating around in a person's blood, like logs and stones carried along through a river, which bumped up against his consciousness. In most cases those logs and stones were chemicals which affected certain moods. Dice's blood was swimming with dopamine, oxytocin, testosterone, and a whole bunch of other chemicals that made one's blood sing when being kissed by the figment of your fantasies.

"Shit, Dice." The drac breathed into the other's expecting mouth. "Calm the fuck down."

"Screw you." He sighed, his brow only slightly furrowed in irritation.

Nine filtered his sixth sense in through a small channel. He'd learned to do that after many years of practice, and it was not easy to do. It required concentration, which was something he didn't have a lot of when all he could think about was how much he wanted to fuck that perfect mouth of Dice's. Unable to hold back any more, the drac leaned in and captured Dice's lips in a gentle kiss.

Dice groaned hungrily in an instant and Nine felt the residual want ricochet off of his narrowed sense. Nine kept his hands firmly on the wall beside Dice. If the man was going to lose it from just a kiss he didn't want to see what would happen if his hands got involved…or did he?

The draconian peeked open his aqua green eyes to look at the scientist below him. His face was a pleasant mix of pleased and embarrassed. Their lips separated with a soft kiss sound and Nine moved his mouth to the place behind Dice's ear and sighed. The phoenix shivered when he felt the other's hot breath fanned out against that sensitive part of him. Taking advantage of their closeness, Nine stuck his nose into the scientist's raven-black hair and inhaled his scent deeply. He made a noise in the back of his throat. The drac then brandished his pointed canines and took pleasure in watching the smaller male shiver as he ran their points from behind his ear to the crook of his neck. _Well, well, whatta ya know?_ The draconian mused to himself. _Looks like has a sensitive spot._ Dice's hands timidly reached down and gripped the hem of Nine's shirt. His pale skin blushed like crazy but he tried to keep his face turned away so the larger male wouldn't notice. But by doing so he exposed his sensitive neck to the drac's mouth. Nine smirked. He was curious now; he wanted to see what would happen. Nine feathered Dice's neck with soft kisses experimentally and was rewarded with quickened breathing and a tighter grip on his shirt. Even with his element under wraps he could still feel the quick and excited thrumming of Dice's blood through his veins like a dull pleasure. He felt the blood throb in a certain area of Dice's body and he backed away smirking.

"Heh. Would you look at that? Looks like I won our bet."

The phoenix didn't comprehend at first. His mind was high on a different kind of drug. He was out of breath and it felt like his brain was wrapped in warm cotton. _What…?_ It was like the drac's words were traveling to him through water. He heard them but it took a while for the meaning to reach his cerebral cortex. _He won our bet?…why is he looking down there…_realization hit Dice and his expression turned to horrified shock. He looked down on himself and saw a large lump straining proudly against the zipper to his jeans. If the prude scientist was blushing before…well…you should have seen him now. Nine wondered how much blood it would take to make someone's face go so _red_ like that.

Dice quickly covered his hands over his crotch, but then thought better of it and awkwardly closed his lab coat and kept it closed by keeping his arms crossed over his chest. Dear lord, the man was so flustered. At first he was angry and started to berate Nine, but found that all the reasons he came up with weren't really good enough. Nine chuckled, which only seemed to instigate the mad scientist.

"H-how dare you-What makes you thin-I'll have you know that-D-Don't you ever-! Aaaaah!" He growled and pinched the bridge of his nose. The two became enveloped in a heavy silence as the flustered scientist struggled to calm himself down and think rationally again. Finally he sighed and with all traces of his blush gone he spoke.

"…as much as I hate to admit it, you're right." He really did. Not only was it insufferable dealing with the embarrassment, but it was also equally infuriating that he'd allowed Nine to get so close to him like that. Honestly, what was he _thinking_? He was an experiment here for crying out loud, and a drac! If anyone had walked in on them and found out what they'd been doing…Dice didn't even want to _think_ about what would happen to his reputation, never mind what consequences he or Nine would face. He grumbled and adjusted his thick glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose. As irritating as the situation might be, Dice always kept the promises he made. It was one of the few things he took pride in about himself.

"Alright, number 62. I'm a man of my word. You won our little _wager_ so now what do you want out of it?" He snapped and glanced at the digital watch on his wrist, pretending like he had some where important to be when in reality he did not. "Steak? Recreational time?"

Nine thought for a moment before a playful grin stretched across his face. _Uh oh… _He usually only got that look when he was scheming something mischievous. _Oh god,_ the scientist thought. _What the hell have I gotten myself into?_

"I want _you_ to come in my cage next time." The drac's canines glinted in the fluorescent lights as his smile broadened.

"No." Dice's answer was quick and his tone was flat, leaving absolutely no room for argument. What he was asking for was completely out of the question and there was no way he would allow himself to go inside a cage with an experiment. That was…just… "Think of something else. Anything else."

Nine looked disappointed. "I can't think of anything else I would want."

Looking past him, Dicen strolled by his experiment and held open his cage door for him. "Well start thinking." He said indifferently with an expression to match.

Nine's impressive shoulders heaved as he let out a sigh. God damn it. Just when he was making some headway with he had to go and shut him out like a clam. Son of a bitch.

"In your cage, 62." The doctor said with a mildly irritated, impersonal tone.

"Alright, alright." Nine sighed, fighting back a smile. The draconian sauntered over to his cage and stepped in without an argument. Not because he was afraid of the consequences if he didn't comply, but because he knew sooner rather than later his favorite scientist would let him out again. In a way, it was like their roles as scientist and specimen were reversed now: Dice was his experiment and Nine was the one studying _him_.

Nine scowled as he heard the lock to his cage click into place. God only knows how long he would have to stay crouched in here again before Dice decided to let him out. The two men held each other's gaze for a moment, before Dicen turned on his heel and made for the door. He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder as if he had something to say. But then he clamped his mouth shut, flicked the lights off and closed the door behind him.

Nine's green eyes shown almost fluorescently in the darkness. His powerful draconian eyes could see just as well in the gloom as they could in the light. Reaching up his pant leg where he kept his faithful, trusty pen he scribbled out the words 'Dr. stick-up-the-butt' on his cell wall and replaced it with 'Doctor Stiffy '. Nine threw back his head and his jubilant laughter bounced off of the empty, concrete walls of the cage room.

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**Grayscale is a free, on-going, online yaoi comic that takes place in a super natural world. The characters and story are enthralling, and the artist's style is remarkably fresh and unique; not to mention **_**awesome looking**_**. It's honestly one of the best comics I've read and it's highly addicting. If any of you haven't read it before I highly recommend that you do, you will not be sorry you did.**

**Start reading Grayscale: fourfears dot com /?p=13****  
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**Sorry, I had to type it like I was saying it out loud because Fanfiction DOT NET has turned ultra-queer lately :P honestly, you can't even type greater than or less than symbols in here any more...honestly...what are they so afraid of?**


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